Category Archives: animals

In the spring I lost my faith­ful min­ion Trip. Ear­ly this sum­mer we added Peach to our menagerie.

Peach — typ­i­cal goofy expres­sion

As much as I love the big orange doo­fus, he’s just not min­ion mate­r­i­al. (Also, he prefers Jim’s com­pa­ny to mine. Curr.)

So… to rec­ti­fy the lack of a min­ion for the Mag­pie Cen­ter for World Dom­i­na­tion. We have added a sec­ond cat.

Meet Diesel. Most often known as Izzy.

Diesel — pon­der­ing the great out­doors

Peach and izzy­have learned to get along, sort of. There’s a lot of chas­ing and steal­ing the best sleep­ing spots going on. Until they’re both tired, then they set­tle down togeth­er on the back of the couch.

For Christ­mas this year we got our­selves a cou­ple of game cama­ras so that we could get a bet­ter look at the ani­mals ( includ­ing neigh­bors) who are using the net­work of trails that goes through our woods. (Peo­ple out here in the West usu­al­ly call what we’ve got for­est. But I’m old school and from the East, where the 20 acres that we’ve got would be called a Woods. So Woods it is for me.)

The cam­eras are a pair of Brown­ing Strike Force (BTC-5). We got a two pack on sale. They take day­light col­or pho­tos and night­time infra-red. They can also shoot video but we haven’t exper­i­ment­ed with that yet.

Each pho­to comes with a bunch of data at the bot­tom. Tem­per­a­ture, moon­phase (use­ful at night) date and time, as well as a set­table cam­era name. We have one that’s unnamed and one that’s named BDFTWO.

Pret­ty typ­i­cal in the day­time pho­tos are the deer. This was tak­en at the inter­sec­tion of the two main paths to the imme­di­ate south of the log­ging road.

Typ­i­cal Deer Shot

We also get oth­er people’s dogs. Any­one know this fel­low?

Run­ning Dog

The night pic­tures can be pret­ty — shots of the deer brows­ing or trav­el­ing to sleep­ing spots. I’m think­ing that the next time we move the cam­eras I’ll try to find a fre­quent­ly used sleep­ing spot for one of them.

This spot is off of the path back to the garage. It’s at the junc­tion of two deer trails that can’t eas­i­ly be walked by humans.

Tiny Steps

Look­ing Up

A few min­utes lat­er anoth­er deer comes by.

Night Brows­er

Late in April we had a new night vis­i­tor.

It’s the first sight­ing of the bob­cat that we thought might be hang­ing around. (Look at the low­er cen­ter of the frame.)

Bob­cat!

Note the short tail with the dark tip.

Cat Butt

Part­ing Shot

We’ve had no sign of the bear that was here last win­ter. Maybe he and the bob­cat aren’t amenable to shar­ing turf?

Well, we did find this Bear.

The Papa Bear Out Rid­ing

And here Jim is walk­ing the dog in the morn­ing before it’s light enough for the cam­era to switch to day­time. (Yeah, it says 8:45 but I think the cam­era missed day­light sav­ings time — besides it stays dark in the woods.)

It’s been a while since I’ve post­ed any of the game cam­era pic­tures. Even when we are ignor­ing them they sit in the woods and on the dri­ve­way and qui­et­ly go about their busi­ness.

Most­ly we get shots of deer. A few of which have iden­ti­fi­able traits. There’s Torn Ear.

Torn Ear

and one that I call Short Neck.

Short Neck

We see lots of butts.

Night Time Walk

And the Big Bike

Back of the Defend­er

We’ve seen a coy­ote a bunch of times. For a cou­ple of days at a time about every month. Both in the woods and on the dri­ve­way. Giz­mo tracks something/someone up the low­er pas­ture road most morn­ings. I think the coy­otes are around more often than they end up on cam­era.

Coy­ote Walks Down the Dri­ve­way

And sur­prise! We spot­ted a pair.

Two! Coy­otes

We also get occa­sion­al sight­ings of Bob the Cat. Only in the sep­tic field nev­er on the dri­ve­way. I can’t fig­ure out how he’s get­ting onto and off of the sep­tic field.

Bob the Cat

Occa­sion­al­ly the cam­eras get arty.

Game Cam­era Art

We’ve pulled that cam­eras in for down­load­ing and bat­tery replace­ments. They should go back out this week­end. We’re going to move the one from the sep­tic field to down at the oth­er end of the pas­ture near the manure pile. See who’s using that low­er pas­ture road. More pic­tures next month. (maybe)

June was a bad month for game cam­eras. One of the Brown­ings died — no idea why. And the replace­ment Bush­nells are tak­ing some time to get set up the way we want them. Still there were a cou­ple of inter­est­ing sight­ings and good pic­tures.

Things we see dur­ing the day:

two up on the way out

We’ve seen both the res­i­dent does — skin­ny neck and ragged ear. There’s also a lit­tle buck­ling but he’s not show­ing up on the cam­eras yet.

skin­ny neck

ragged ear

There are two coy­otes:
We’re still learn­ing to tell them apart. One has very dis­tinct col­oration on his face. The oth­er is not so dra­mat­i­cal­ly marked.

The first real month of spring — as evi­denced by the vis­i­tor in our first pic­ture. The robins are back and hop­ping around the pas­ture look­ing for worms. This fel­low was look­ing to land on the fence post that the cam­era is mount­ed on.

well hel­lo there

And they coy­otes are show­ing them­selves reg­u­lar­ly both at night and dur­ing the day.

Walk­ing up the road by the pas­ture.

Coy­ote walk­ing up the dri­ve­way at night

also in the sep­tic field

The deer are start­ing to look a bit bet­ter — fat­ter and sleek­er. Haven’t seen any that are obvi­ous­ly preg­nant yet.

Deer walk­ing along look­ing for a bite.

In oth­er signs of spring the trac­tor now has the brush mow­er attached to it. We’ll be mow­ing the dri­ve­way verges and grass roads reg­u­lar­ly for a cou­ple of month snow.